Category: Baseball and Softball Science

The Physics Behind The Results

PITTSBURGH – (5 min. read) As part of their presentation “How Technology Unlocked My True Potential At The Plate” from the 2017 American Baseball Coaches Association Convention, Diamond Kinetics co-founder and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at The University of Pittsburgh, Dr. Buddy Clark, in conjunction with Master Hitting Instructor Dan Koosed of Pro Swing Rx in Anaheim,…

How A Ball That Traveled 323 Feet Could Have Traveled 353 Feet

PITTSBURGH – In the third inning of the Pittsburgh Pirates’ 6-5 extra-innings win over the St. Louis Cardinals, Andrew McCutchen connected on a 2-2 fastball from Michael Wacha that resulted in a RBI-double, scoring John Jaso from first base. According to Baseball Savant data, McCutchen’s hit traveled 323 feet in the air with a launch…

The Anatomy of Jordy Mercer’s RBI Double

PITTSBURGH – Last week, as a guest on The Blue Dot Report podcast, Dr. Alan Nathan was posed the question, “Does understanding concepts about physics help one understand or enjoy the game more?” Dr. Nathan’s response was: “I really do look for things that are indicative of phenomena that I’ve studied, or I try to…

How Much Does Temperature Affect Home Run Potential

  PITTSBURGH – According to the Washington Post, the average global temperature in 2015 shattered 2014’s record-setting heat to become the hottest year since reliable record-keeping began. While there is currently a large focus on this issue and its significance for many reasons, today we will look at it from a baseball perspective. As everyone…

Scoring Is On The Rise (Again) In College Baseball

“The NCAA baseball has higher seams, and the higher seams certainly affect the aerodynamic properties of a ball. Laboratory experiments have been done where you set the two balls spinning at the same rate and look at how much movement there is. The data show that there’s more movement with the high-seam ball. Moreover, a…

High BABIP Swing vs. Home Run Swing

  PITTSBURGH (UPDATED, 6 min read)– Last week we analyzed attack angle and trigger to impact, in terms of swing optimization, to see how those specific metrics could affect the outcome of two different swings. With the help of Dr. Alan Nathan, we learned how attack angle not only affects batting average and home run probability,…

Swing Optimization via SwingTracker & DiamondCLUB

PITTSBURGH – On Christmas Eve of last year, The Hardball Times released an article by Dr. Alan Nathan entitled, “Optimizing The Swing Part Duex: Paying Homage To Teddy Ballgame”. The piece was a follow-up by Dr. Nathan to a previous Hardball Times story, “Optimizing The Swing” where he looked at determining whether a curveball can…

Why Pitchers Would Hate to Play Baseball In Outer Space

PITTSBURGH – From June to November 2011, Satoshi Furukawa, an astronaut with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, stayed aboard the International Space Station for 165 days as a flight engineer for the Expedition 28/29 mission. His mission included experiments in Kibo, and ISS maintenance as well as playing a one-man game of baseball, which we…

Best of Diamond Kinetics in 2015: August

The clinching home run by Tu Wei Hung from Chinese Taipei in the @plws2015 HR Derby #PLWS2015 #SwingTracker #Crushed pic.twitter.com/VsWywptUMk — Diamond Kinetics (@DiamondKinetics) August 8, 2015 PITTSBURGH – The year-in-review countdown continues as we take a look back at what happened each month in the world of Diamond Kinetics. Today, we see what happened in…

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